Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

U.S. Anti-Revisionism

The third wave of U.S. anti-revisionism can best be described as a transition period – between the first and second waves, which were born from struggles inside the CPUSA, and the fourth wave, which developed out of the increasing radicalization of the mass struggles of the turbulent 1960s. While some of the anti-revisionist groups of the third wave – such as Progressive Labor and Hammer & Steel – did come directly out of the CPUSA, others, such as the Communist Party, USA (Marxist-Leninist) were independent formations, without direct roots in the CPUSA – influenced instead primarily by ’60s radicalism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

The Chinese Revolution has always played an important role in U.S. anti-revisionism. The anti-revisionist groups of the late 1940s frequently referred to the Chinese experience, and, in the late 1950s, supporters of the Provisional Organizing Committee (POC) quoted Mao in their critique of CPUSA policies. But it was the appearance of open polemics between the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and China in the early 1960s, which gave a tremendous boost to anti-revisionism internationally, including in the United States. The Chinese polemics against Soviet “modern revisionism” inspired many to question what had been, up-to-then, orthodox Communist positions on many subjects and provided the anti-revisionist movement with an international center and point of reference.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the proclamation of Maoism as a distinct version of Marxism-Leninism further stimulated and inspired many if not all prior anti-revisionists and others looking for a different kind of communism from the model represented by the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This was particularly true of students and other young people, who looked to the Chinese Red Guards as a model of activism. While some of these young activists were drawn to Progressive Labor, the full flowering of American Maoism would not come until the proliferation of new groups and organizations after 1969, in the fourth wave of U. S. anti-revisionism.

Relevant Chinese Polemics

The Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) was launched in July 1962 in New York by some fifty former members of the CPUSA, who left the Party after a series of disputes on a variety of theoretical and political issues. Elected to leadership at the conference were Milt Rosen and Mort Scheer, as Chairman and Vice Chairman of National Coordinating Committee.
Rosen had previously been a member of the NY State Committee of the CPUSA and its Labor Secretary. Scheer had also been a member of the State Committee and Chair of the Erie County Organization of the CPUSA.
Early on, the founders of PL sympathized with China in the Sino-Soviet Split. The PLM was also active in the movement in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, arranging trips to Cuba in defiance of State Department policy. PL did important organizing in Harlem through the work of Bill Epton and others. The PLM was also one of the earliest organizations to mobilize against the Vietnam War through the May 2nd Movement. In the summer of 1965, the PLM became the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Later in the decade, supporters of the PLP played a major role in SDS and maintained control over the organization after the 1969 SDS convention. The PLP broke with Maoism at the beginning of the 1970s.

Periodicals

The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) was the first independent Black revolutionary Marxist organization of the 1960s. Organized in 1962 by Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford), a close associate of Malcolm X and Queen Mother Audley Moore, RAM was a national semi-clandestine organization which articulated a revolutionary program for African Americans that fused Black nationalism with Marxism-Leninism.

Although it was not a large organization, RAM influenced a wide range of groups, including the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the Black Workers Congress. RAM dissolved in 1969. As Max Elbaum notes, “RAM’s significance had not resided in its organizational strength, but in its popularization of revolutionary nationalist, Marxist and Maoist ideas during a critical period of the Black freedom movement.” (Revolution in the Air, p. 65)

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) was formed in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. The League united a number of different Revolutionary Union Movements (RUMs) that were growing rapidly among rank-and-file Black workers in the Detroit auto plants. The formation of the League was an attempt to create a more cohesive political organization guided by the principles of Black liberation and revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. By the summer of 1971, the League ceased to exist, having split into several groups. One of these groups joined with the Communist League and other organizations to found the Communist Labor Party. Others became part of the Black Workers Congress and its progeny. While the LRBW was only active for a short period of time, it was a significant and influential organization in a time of increasing militancy and political action by Black workers and in the context of both the Black liberation and anti-revisionist communist movements in the United States.

Hammer & Steel (H&S) developed from a split in the CPUSA in New England in 1960-61. It was led by Homer Chase, the former organizer of the New England District, CPUSA and and a member of its National Commmittee, together with a small group of his supporters. Notice of the appearance of the H & S group first appeared in the newspaper of the POC in November 1961. The Hammer & Steel Newsletter began appearing the following year. Sometimes going by the name to the New England Party of Labor, H & S criticized the CPUSA for what it described as a liquidation of the revolutionary line on the African American national question, and for returning to a position of “American Exceptionalism” (by supporting the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy). Though a small group, H&S was the only U.S. anti-revisionist organization to be attacked by Khrushchev by name in a polemic against the Communist Party of China (CPC) in which he accused the Chinese of supporting splits in Communist Parties around the world. H & S's efforts to collaborate with the POC and PL failed to bear fruit, but, for a bried period in the mid-1960s, it did succeed in issuing joint statements with the Ad Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party. From 1961 through 1966 H & S strongly supported Chinese and Albanian positions in the polemics within the international Communist movement and H & S representatives claim to have met with the Central Committees of both the Chinese and Albanian parties. In 1968, however, H & S sharply criticized the leaders of Cultural Revolution as “left revisionists who are different in form but the same in essence as modern revisionists.” H & S later began calling itself Ray O. Light before adopting its current name – the Revolutionary Organization of Labor.

Periodical

Antithesis appears to have been a small group of young people in San Francisco, who published seven issues of an anti-reivisionist newsletter of the same name from August 1964 until November 1965. It is believed that this group may have had some connections with Hammer & Steel.

In 1968, differences within and around Hammer & Steel led to the formation of a group called Youth for Stalin, which later that year issued a long polemic entitled, “The Role of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the International Marxist-Leninist Movement. The October Revolution vs. the ’Cultural Revolution’.“ Shortly thereafter, the group changed its name to the Stalinist Workers Group for Afro-American National Liberation and a New Communist International. The Stalinist Workers Group issued an irregular publication, the Stalinist Workers Group Bulletin until at least 1973. In 1976 the group renamed itself Ray O. Light.

Little is known about the Ad Hoc Committee. Some claimed it was a secret faction within the CPUSA in Chicago. It published the Ad Hoc Bulletin (Marxist-Leninist) from 1963 through 1971. The publication strongly supported the Chinese Cultural Revolution and some of its materials were reprinted by the Chinese in the mid-1960s.

In their book, Heavy Radicals. (Zero Books, 2015) Aaron J. Leonard and Conor A. Gallagher argue that documents they received from the FBI pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that this group was, in fact, a creation of the FBI as part of the Bureau ’s Cointelpro operation against the CPUSA.

The C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) was born in Los Angeles during the 1965 Watts riots out of a split in the local POC. It published a newspaper, the People's Voice and a theoretical journal, Red Flag from 1965 to 1968. In 1968, the Party underwent a split, with both successor organization's keeping the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) name. One, under Arnold Hoffman, continued to publish the People’s Voice. The other, headed by Michael Laski, began publishing a new newspaper, The New Worker in 1969. That same year, the Laski group merged with the Proletarian Revolutionary Party in New York, led by Jonathan Leake, a former anarchist turned Maoist, who had been active in the Resurgence Youth Movement, which was founded in September 1964 as the youth section of the Anarchist Federation to which Murray Bookchin and Noam Chomsky belonged. Both C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)s appear to have disappeared by 1971. After the demise of the Laski C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.), the former members of the Proletarian Revolutionary Party and others reconstituted themselves as the Marxist-Leninist Party. These C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)s should not be confused with the C.P.U.S.A. (M-L) founded by the Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee (M.L.O.C.) in 1978 nor with the C.P. (Marxist-Leninist) created by the October League in 1977.

PERIODICALS

In 1970, as the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) began to collapse, former Proletarian Revolutionary Party members in New York who had joined the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) and other members and supporters on the East Coast regrouped as the Marxist-Leninist Party. Together with its associated organizations, the Red Women’s Detachment and the Red Guards, the Marxist-Leninist Party was active for several years. The Party itself published a paper called Communist, and the Red Women’s Detachment published a paper called Red Star.

At some point, The Communist ceased publication and a new anonymously published paper, Class War appeared. This was clearly a continuation of The Communist as the article ’Struggle Between Two Lines in the Communist Movement’, begun in the former, was contined in the latter. Class War was notable for its Lin Piaoism, as demonstrated by its critique of the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of China.

This Marxist-Leninist Party should not be confused with the Marxist-Leninist Party created by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists (C.O.U.S.M.L.) in 1980.